The effect of cash transfers on mental health - new evidence from South Africa
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Ohrnberger, Julius
Fichera, Eleonora
Sutton, Matt
Anselmi, Laura
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background
Mental health and poverty are strongly interlinked. There is a gap in the literature on the effects of poverty alleviation programmes on mental health. We aim to fill this gap by studying the effect of an exogenous income shock generated by the Child Support Grant, South Africa’s largest Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programme, on mental health.
Methods
We use biennial data on 10,925 individuals from the National Income Dynamics Study between 2008 and 2014. We exploit the programme’s eligibility criteria to estimate instrumental variable Fixed Effects models.
Results
We find that receiving the Child Support Grant improves adult mental health by 0.822 points (on a 0–30 scale), 4.1% of the sample mean.
Conclusion
Our findings show that UCT programmes have strong mental health benefits for the poor adult population.
Mental health and poverty are strongly interlinked. There is a gap in the literature on the effects of poverty alleviation programmes on mental health. We aim to fill this gap by studying the effect of an exogenous income shock generated by the Child Support Grant, South Africa’s largest Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programme, on mental health.
Methods
We use biennial data on 10,925 individuals from the National Income Dynamics Study between 2008 and 2014. We exploit the programme’s eligibility criteria to estimate instrumental variable Fixed Effects models.
Results
We find that receiving the Child Support Grant improves adult mental health by 0.822 points (on a 0–30 scale), 4.1% of the sample mean.
Conclusion
Our findings show that UCT programmes have strong mental health benefits for the poor adult population.
Date Issued
2020-04-03
Date Acceptance
2020-03-26
Citation
BMC Public Health, 2020, 20 (1), pp.1-13
ISSN
1471-2458
Publisher
BioMed Central
Start Page
1
End Page
13
Journal / Book Title
BMC Public Health
Volume
20
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if
changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons
licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons
licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain
permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the
data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if
changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons
licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons
licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain
permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the
data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000523451200010&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Mental health
Poverty
Cash transfer
Instrumental variable estimation
Fixed effects
South Africa
CHILD-DEVELOPMENT
TRANSFER PROGRAM
POVERTY
INCOME
REGRESSION
DISORDERS
COUNTRIES
OUTCOMES
SHOCKS
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 436
Date Publish Online
2020-04-03